A Single Bit Matters: Coherent Noise of Seismic Data Loggers

2015 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 901-907 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Takagi ◽  
K. Nishida ◽  
Y. Aoki ◽  
T. Maeda ◽  
K. Masuda ◽  
...  
Geophysics ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 854-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Larner ◽  
Ron Chambers ◽  
Mai Yang ◽  
Walt Lynn ◽  
Willon Wai

Despite significant advances in marine streamer design, seismic data are often plagued by coherent noise having approximately linear moveout across stacked sections. With an understanding of the characteristics that distinguish such noise from signal, we can decide which noise‐suppression techniques to use and at what stages to apply them in acquisition and processing. Three general mechanisms that might produce such noise patterns on stacked sections are examined: direct and trapped waves that propagate outward from the seismic source, cable motion caused by the tugging action of the boat and tail buoy, and scattered energy from irregularities in the water bottom and sub‐bottom. Depending upon the mechanism, entirely different noise patterns can be observed on shot profiles and common‐midpoint (CMP) gathers; these patterns can be diagnostic of the dominant mechanism in a given set of data. Field data from Canada and Alaska suggest that the dominant noise is from waves scattered within the shallow sub‐buttom. This type of noise, while not obvious on the shot records, is actually enhanced by CMP stacking. Moreover, this noise is not confined to marine data; it can be as strong as surface wave noise on stacked land seismic data as well. Of the many processing tools available, moveout filtering is best for suppressing the noise while preserving signal. Since the scattered noise does not exhibit a linear moveout pattern on CMP‐sorted gathers, moveout filtering must be applied either to traces within shot records and common‐receiver gathers or to stacked traces. Our data example demonstrates that although it is more costly, moveout filtering of the unstacked data is particularly effective because it conditions the data for the critical data‐dependent processing steps of predictive deconvolution and velocity analysis.


Geophysics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-51
Author(s):  
Chao Wang ◽  
Yun Wang

Reduced-rank filtering is a common method for attenuating noise in seismic data. As conventional reduced-rank filtering distinguishes signals from noises only according to singular values, it performs poorly when the signal-to-noise ratio is very low, or when data contain high levels of isolate or coherent noise. Therefore, we developed a novel and robust reduced-rank filtering based on the singular value decomposition in the time-space domain. In this method, noise is recognized and attenuated according to the characteristics of both singular values and singular vectors. The left and right singular vectors corresponding to large singular values are selected firstly. Then, the right singular vectors are classified into different categories according to their curve characteristics, such as jump, pulse, and smooth. Each kind of right singular vector is related to a type of noise or seismic event, and is corrected by using a different filtering technology, such as mean filtering, edge-preserving smoothing or edge-preserving median filtering. The left singular vectors are also corrected by using the filtering methods based on frequency attributes like main-frequency and frequency bandwidth. To process seismic data containing a variety of events, local data are extracted along the local dip of event. The optimal local dip is identified according to the singular values and singular vectors of the data matrices that are extracted along different trial directions. This new filtering method has been applied to synthetic and field seismic data, and its performance is compared with that of several conventional filtering methods. The results indicate that the new method is more robust for data with a low signal-to-noise ratio, strong isolate noise, or coherent noise. The new method also overcomes the difficulties associated with selecting an optimal rank.


Geophysics ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Frank Linville ◽  
Robert A. Meek

Primary reflections in seismic records are often obscured by coherent noise making processing and interpretation difficult. Trapped water modes, surface waves, scattered waves, air waves, and tube waves to name a few, must be removed early in the processing sequence to optimize subsequent processing and imaging. We have developed a noise canceling algorithm that effectively removes many of the commonly encountered noise trains in seismic data. All currently available techniques for coherent noise attenuation suffer from limitations that introduce unacceptable signal distortions and artifacts. Also, most of those techniques impose the dual stringent requirements of equal and fine spatial sampling in the field acquisition of seismic data. Our technique takes advantage of characteristics usually found in coherent noise such as being localized in time, highly aliased, nondispersive (or only mildly so), and exhibit a variety of moveout patterns across the seismic records. When coherent noise is localized in time, a window much like a surgical mute is drawn around the noise. The algorithm derives an estimate of the noise in the window, automatically correcting for amplitude and phase differences, and adaptively subtracts this noise from the window of data. This signal estimate is then placed back in the record. In a model and a land data example, the algorithm removes noise more effectively with less signal distortion than does f-k filtering or velocity notch filtering. Downgoing energy in a vertical seismic profile (VSP) with irregular receiver spacing is also removed.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. V1-V10
Author(s):  
Julián L. Gómez ◽  
Danilo R. Velis ◽  
Juan I. Sabbione

We have developed an empirical-mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm for effective suppression of random and coherent noise in 2D and 3D seismic amplitude data. Unlike other EMD-based methods for seismic data processing, our approach does not involve the time direction in the computation of the signal envelopes needed for the iterative sifting process. Instead, we apply the sifting algorithm spatially in the inline-crossline plane. At each time slice, we calculate the upper and lower signal envelopes by means of a filter whose length is adapted dynamically at each sifting iteration according to the spatial distribution of the extrema. The denoising of a 3D volume is achieved by removing the most oscillating modes of each time slice from the noisy data. We determine the performance of the algorithm by using three public-domain poststack field data sets: one 2D line of the well-known Alaska 2D data set, available from the US Geological Survey; a subset of the Penobscot 3D volume acquired offshore by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy, Canada; and a subset of the Stratton 3D land data from South Texas, available from the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. The results indicate that random and coherent noise, such as footprint signatures, can be mitigated satisfactorily, enhancing the reflectors with negligible signal leakage in most cases. Our method, called empirical-mode filtering (EMF), yields improved results compared to other 2D and 3D techniques, such as [Formula: see text] EMD filter, [Formula: see text] deconvolution, and [Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text] adaptive prediction filtering. EMF exploits the flexibility of EMD on seismic data and is presented as an efficient and easy-to-apply alternative for denoising seismic data with mild to moderate structural complexity.


Geophysics ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 55 (11) ◽  
pp. 1496-1503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greg Turner

The tau-p transform is a discretized Radon transform. The choice of discretization parameters is a very important part of performing the transform. Insufficient sampling in the tau direction leads to aliasing problems equivalent to those encountered in any one‐dimensional time series. A simple graphical method illustrates that too coarse sampling in the p direction results in reconstructions containing data duplicated incorrectly at different spatial positions. The spacing of these duplications is dependent on the temporal frequency of the data. Insufficient spatial sampling of the original seismic data causes events to plot at multiple p values in tau-p domain, again dependent on temporal frequency. Therefore, to velocity filter spatially aliased noise efficiently, multiple p values must be filtered. The use of appropriate filters in the p-f domain can substantially improve the noise rejection capabilities of velocity filters on spatially aliased noise while having little effect on desired reflection signals.


Geophysics ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1310-1314 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing Li ◽  
Kris Vasudevan ◽  
Frederick A. Cook

Coherency filtering is a tool used commonly in 2-D seismic processing to isolate desired events from noisy data. It assumes that phase‐coherent signal can be separated from background incoherent noise on the basis of coherency estimates, and coherent noise from coherent signal on the basis of different dips. It is achieved by searching for the maximum coherence direction for each data point of a seismic event and enhancing the event along this direction through stacking; it suppresses the incoherent events along other directions. Foundations for a 2-D coherency filtering algorithm were laid out by several researchers (Neidell and Taner, 1971; McMechan, 1983; Leven and Roy‐Chowdhury, 1984; Kong et al., 1985; Milkereit and Spencer, 1989). Milkereit and Spencer (1989) have applied 2-D coherency filtering successfully to 2-D deep crustal seismic data for the improvement of visualization and interpretation. Work on random noise attenuation using frequency‐space or time‐space prediction filters both in two or three dimensions to increase the signal‐to‐noise ratio of the data can be found in geophysical literature (Canales, 1984; Hornbostel, 1991; Abma and Claerbout, 1995).


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